Donald Trump’s Campaign Admits to “Voter Suppression Operations”

“We have three major voter suppression operations under way.”

Well, this is concerning. In a new report by Bloomberg Businessweek, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign leadership is on the record saying they're trying to prevent people from voting. (Isn't voting the entire point of an election?)

“We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” said the unnamed senior official. These initiatives seek to prevent three of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's key voter groups from showing up at the polls: "idealistic" white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump is betting that without women or African Americans, Hillary Clinton can't win. The polls show Hillary leading by a small but significant margin in most states, so in a race this close, any vote that doesn't go to Clinton is technically a win for Trump. A wasted vote on Election Day would prevent Clinton from inching closer to the electoral vote threshold, giving Trump room to catch up. As the Washington Post explains it: "If he can't go up, drag Clinton down. If 20% of voters stay home, who cares?"

The strategy is based in reverse psychology; in order to keep people from voting, the campaign (composed largely of businesspeople) is turning to good old marketing strategies, like Facebook, according to Bloomberg. One of these voter suppression operations includes posting so-called "dark" posts to Facebook, in which the Trump team will post nonpublic status updates "whose viewership the campaign controls," Bloomberg reports. As the man running Trump's Facebook and Twitter, Brad Parscale, puts it to the news outlet, “only the people we want to see it, see it." One such ad is a South Park-style cartoon of Hillary calling black teens "super predators," which only African-American voters will be able to see on the social media platform. Young women will see ads focusing on Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct (and likely ignoring Trump's own sexual misconduct accusations.)

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has said countless times that this election is "rigged," and has told his supporters to "go out and watch" the polls for voter fraud. As former White House communications director Jeff Nesbit writes for Time, voter fraud is practically nonexistent. But "what is quite real, though, is voter intimidation and voter suppression," and that's where we are now, less than two weeks from Election Day.

Regardless of who you vote for, it's important to exercise your right to cast a ballot as an American citizen.